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Right there with you T-Satt. We have had 30 day returns on our whole store for over a year and no increase in returns. Actually we don’t even get returns. Since 2002 maybe 2 or 3. Also only had 3 or 4 breakages. Nothing but 100% feedback and out of 852 feedbacks only had 1 neutral since 2002.
It is part of doing business. Back in the mfg. days we had tons of stuff stolen from the plant usually by employees, Pens, pencils, calculators, toilet paper, clip boards, not books, computer paper, ink cartridges, staples, paper clips, staplers, tape, tape dispensers, boxes, tape guns, extension cords, paper towels, soap, get the point. all of that added up to a percentage of our Sales. In retail it is called shrinkage. As online sellers we don’t have that. just some internal breakage from slippery fingers occasionally.
With such a low return rate, who cares. I will take anything back any time, even paying for shipping both ways. I know my numbers, I know my margins, I have tons of slush built into the profit margins, even offering free shipping on a lot of items and making more money now on shipping because of it.
We have been building our own Shopify Store online for months now and when we go live, we will have all these types of benefits for our customers. And just think, customers coming directly to our store without having to pay any Ebay fees at all, but we set the rules, and the policies [SOP’s] will be just as customer friendly as Ebay is trying to get us to be.
You know that the best way to get a handle on some of these numbers is to make sure one uses accounting software and pulls a bi-weekly P&L and look at the percentages. Then compare those percentages with other metrics as a baseline. I remember almost all of my percentages from the old days and if I have a slush category like shrinkage of less than 1.5% I am good to go. I also remember about two dozen other percentages and anything within those or less I know we are making good profit margins. Get those too high and out of line, then make the internal manuvers to cut back and correct, including reducing personnel.
So run our online business the same way. Just do the changes, implement, adjust and move on. Simple. Atleast no one selling on Ebay has to deal with and be responsible for hundreds of employees. You don’t know head aches until you have that number of “people” to deal with internally. After every pay day, I had dozens of people who “wan’t to see me”. Well, handling Ebay changes is a walk in the park.Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine art in Atlanta
03/01/2018 at 9:54 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 349: Having A Huge Inventory Is Not The Goal, It’s The Strategy #34126Hay Mark: We don’t use SmartPost but both of your sizes shouldn’t be even close to having DIM weight kick in. I think I recall 1,728 CUBIC inches is the beginning of the DIM weight concern and that is 12x12x12. After 1,728 cubic inches I think that is where DIM wieghts begin and start to slowly climb from there. One of the reasons I belive Ebay stopped making the larger boxes and also why the C size box was dropped from USPS but that is just an opinion.
From what I have been reading from all you SmartPost users it seems that that postage category has been really wonkers.
mike at mdc galleries and fine art in atlanta
02/27/2018 at 10:39 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 349: Having A Huge Inventory Is Not The Goal, It’s The Strategy #33980Oh I am on board with that. As VP of Operations I had to do tons of projections on capacity, through put, conversion, output per unit in a time span. I had to justify buying million dollar pieces of machinery and laying off personnel in order to increase output, lower unit costs and thus increase bottom line net. And the use of the word “assumptions” is totally correct. I had a clip board on 6 stop watches measuring every move a line of people made. If they took more than 3 steps in any direction it was too far and I would buy whatever it was they were “wasting time” on going to get. BUT.. then when I started to work the magic it was always using my spread sheets to play the “what if” game. What would happen if I could increase a line speed, make people move faster, bend less, talk, blink or breath less and if not what robot could I buy at what cost, to replace them with faster machinery and in return calcutate the ROI, break even point and then projection future sales, profit, growth, increased capacity which in turn lead to our sales dept. being able to go after even larger accounts which we previously could not handle.
So what I really like about the spread sheets is the ability to “play what if’s” based upon the difference between WAG and SWAG. WAG is my Wild Ass Quesses vs. my “Scientific Wild Ass Guesses”. LOL 🙂
Mark… our e-mail is mdcgalleries@gmail.com
and T-Satt.. yes my wife works with us as does a helper on Some Fridays, Sat. and Sun. And yes, it is an assembly line process, with “bottle necks” identified and those being smoothed out for consistent flow. And NO I do not use my stop watches on them. They would KILL ME!!! LOL 🙂
Mike in Atlanta
02/27/2018 at 10:14 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 349: Having A Huge Inventory Is Not The Goal, It’s The Strategy #33976Thanks Mark: I thought I remembered seeing it. Actually going to my account in 30 minutes with all of 2017 numbers for both the corporation and personal. Corp. is due by March 15th.
The projection SS will be a topic of discussion and by using it, that will help me do some projections for next year. As of now WonderLister shows we have sold 479 items last year, avg. of 39 per month, we are at 911 total items, avg. cost of $8.61 per item with an avg. selling price of $35.32 each for a total of $16,919 [or approx. 4.1 times the money invested into inventory]for 2017 [$20,719 if shipping is included]. So now with the SS we can calculate the Sales velocity we experienced over the past several years, and do some projections to see where we need to be [purchasing wise] with all variables such as type of item, demand, interest, and other “soft” factors considered for the coming next 2 to 3 years.
Of course the margins are always able to be increased based on buying at lower costs and by increaseing sales price. Our collectible home decor items are harder to find and cost more, but about 5 years ago our cost per item was over $20 each. We have been able to get that down to $8 and change for the same if not better quality items and items that sell. But even after “donating” over a thousand itemns from the closing of those six booths we still have a lot of low selling cost items that we paid too much for.
These days we do find $8 to $15 dollar cost items that we seem to sell for about 10 times the money like T-Satt tries to do. But as we all know the sourcing is much harder and requires more knowledge than just buying a $5 box – tray lot and re-selling a dozen items. It is knowing the type of crystal, pottery, china and the type of art and prints then buy low and sell high.Hopefully with your SS we can get a handle on the quantity of inventory within a calculated aquisition cost and with the projected sales through rate figure out where we need to be to double the sales amount. Plus our other online platforms are now getting established and those will start to figure in the mix.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
02/27/2018 at 8:49 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 349: Having A Huge Inventory Is Not The Goal, It’s The Strategy #33970Hey Mark: Mentioning your spread sheet didn’t you post your email at one time and stated if anyone was interested to contact you and you would provide a copy? I thought you did and I book marked it but now can’t find it. I had been using Easy Auction Tracker for a few years but moved over to WonderLister years ago and then stopped using the EAT spread sheet. But WonderLister and also SixBit that T-Satt uses does not provide the type of data a good excel spread sheet does nor does it work the numbers in the way that the discussion about using these numbers for casting does.
Don’t get me wrong, the numbers needed and many financial reports are available and contained within WonderLister but the analysis of the numbers in the manner in which being discussed here would have to be gathered from WL and then a spread sheet created and formulas written for the type of analysis to do the forward projections.
So, if I was correct, then let me know how to contact you and it would be really appreciated if you are willing to share your spread sheet. It would save me a ton of time from having to go and build a copy for myself since I am no longer using the EAT spreadsheet. I have the 2017 numbers by quarter, monthly, and weekly. [date each item bought, where we bought, what we paid for ea. item, items sold ea. month, sold amount, expenses, etc., etc. but to take a few of these and take a look at velocity, projection for growth, etc. is what I am missing. Just need the sheet to date those in for an analysis.Thanks,
Mike at MDC Galleries in AtlantaGood morning:
There are a couple of things that you may wish to think about. It will help with this scenario and also in the future as well.
A couple of hints to draw a parallel between art framing and the following:
At Home Depot real wood crown molding [pine] unfinished is approx. $5-$6 per lineal foot. Now think about how much a trim carpenter / contractor would charge to install, then how much for a painter to paint and finish it. Now this mental picture is just for a cheap rough guide first. But for fun, let’s say then that when finished the crown molding may run $8.00 to $10 per lineal foot. If you have a 2’x3’=10 lineal-running feet x $$10=about $100 if it were just for the wood, finish and nailing it together. Now at the frame shop, they will make very tight, smooth mitered joints, use colored wood putty to fill any seams or small nail holes to make the finish, put on an acid free, neautral Ph protective backing-moisture barrier, add the hanging hardware. So now you may be in the $125 to $150 range.
Now add to this that a good professional frame shop will have a huge selection of frames to offer [you have seen shops wityh all those small 90 degree corner pieces hanging on the wall to select from]. Some of those nicer pieces of wood with stippled colors, gold leafing, multi-stained pieces go for much more than Home depot crown molding per lineal foot. I have seen some at $20 to $30 per lineal foot just for the frame materials.Now with many cheap art print reproductions, you will find they are framed in modern sleek metal frames that are locked together at each corner on the back with corner clamps, or spring loaded. These run about $.20 to $.25 per lineal INCH or about $3 per lineal foot. or $25 to $30 for a 2’x3′ painting, then what else you will find on the very low end prints is a plastic frame that is made from an injection molding process. These are very cheap, low end.
Now with regards to how much value an unframed painting is devalued. On the high end, nothing at all. Take a 10 million dollar painting that a foreign collector wants for his collection and you still have a 10 million dollar painting, framed or unframed. Take a low end reproduction, but done with a high resolution line count 300 dots or higher so the human eye can’t perceive it is a repro, or a Giclee’ print done with a high end inkjet printer that is worth about $50 for the art and put a $350 nice ornate frame on it and you have a big difference. I have been known to buy art at Estate Sales and then disassemble the art right on site and give the art and glass back to the owner and just take the frame. I also have done just the opposite. My wife hates when I do that. I even buy paintings on canvas, get them home, take the painting out and Gessoe over the painting I bought, sand it down and re-use it for my own art and then save the frame for something else.
Now lastly also an easy process is to just take the painting into a good professional frame shop [not Hobby Lobby or Jo Ann’s Fabrics] and talk with the shop owner. Tell him you may be thinking of having this framed and would he give you a quote to frame it professionally. He will show you some of the corner samples he has on the wall behind him, he will lay a couple down on the corners of the paiting, he will tell you the cost of that selection, pick one and have him give you a quote. Then that would be the approx. value added by anyone that would take it to a shop in the local area.
Lastly, tthere are frames that have very ornate scroll work on them, many are done with plaster or moulage clay then real gold leaf added. You may have seen frames with pieces broken off exposing white underneath in antique shops. Those could be very expensive frames and are worth money sold just as they are. A good craftsman that works with molded frames can repair broken off pieces, gold leaf over the repairs and create a $500 – $750 dollar frame. So buy old frames at flea markets, IF you know what you are buying.
Hope this helps in your decsion making process
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta.
We do the same. We use a 23 digit code. It is already pre-printed on a paper tag we attach to every item. It has coded and camoflage numbers in it and that is why we can pre-print tags and just leave a few choice blank spots. From our sku number we can tell the item number, what we paid for it, when boughtand where it is located. The balance of the numbers [camoflage] help disguise those numbers which are easily deciphered by a savey buyer. I can uncover a dealers cost many times by looking at his SKU number then I make offers accordingly.
The advantage of having these items hidden in our SKU is when we are out on the road and get offers, we used to always ask ourselves, what did we pay for that and how long have we had it. Now we know this immediately by looking at our sku and can decide if we wish to take an offer or not or if we wish to counter offer. Then if an item sells and we are out of town which happens frequently, we have our helper who lives less than a minute from us and we text her the sold sku number and she comes to our home office, goes right to the bin it is stored in, pulls out the item number and packs and ships for us [if needed].
A good internal sku number can hold a lot of information if set up properly and in advance of acquiring a lot of inventory. It is also very useful in year end close out for tax purposes and also report generation for financial questions and queries.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Also go to the right hand side of the SL forum and scroll down and you will see two search boxes. Just type in how to ship a hat or cap on both the forum and the older blog and you will see many, many replies and suggestions to this question.
The search boxes of SL are great tools to find the answers to former or frequently asked questions that have appeared here over the years.
Follows the old saying that give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.02/07/2018 at 10:50 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 346: Frank Discussions. Gewgaws. Storage. #32413Jay… that is now going to become a mantra.. “We are just Crabs in the Ecology of Commerce”. GREAT LINE! LOL
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
02/03/2018 at 11:29 am in reply to: Went "All In" on a lot of vintage ink, sell as lot or individually? #32016Stone lithography is a fairly dying art except in art schools and fine art ateliers. The techniques are old, very labor intensive, require lots of floor space in an art school. The stones are very limited now and hard to acquire. They have to be quarried out of limestone pits. They weight ton and need lift jacks or fork lifts to move around.
Due to these restrictions and the fact most students are now producing work digitally and the print method of fine art choice is a large format ink jet printer and making Giclee print on demand prints, I think the market would be pretty limited. Maybe a collector of old letter press type of stuff or old etching stuff maybe. The art schools will buy fresh ink from vendor-suppliers and stock it in their school art supply stores.
So, I don’t see these being much in use and someone needing a “fill in color” to add to an existing set. I would try listing as a lot and see what happens. Also that creates just one listing for you.
I had a set of grumbacker pastel about two years ago and Listings the complete set and it sold within a few months for $125, I think, I recall. Also you are unsure of the condition of the inks down inside the tube to know if it is even usuable as a functioning color.
Good luck with it.
Mike at MDCG in Atl.
02/03/2018 at 10:18 am in reply to: Went "All In" on a lot of vintage ink, sell as lot or individually? #32009Here you go.. follow this link and the info. it provides.
http://www.graphicchemical.com/lithography07.pdf
I have done stone lithography before, mostly in under gradute school, and printmaking is my major and career specialty.
The inks are used just like litho crayons to draw on the prepared stone surface. But unlike the litho crayons which are stiffer and in a pencil like format, these are looser, more fluid in there consistency and used to cover broader areas faster and are “brushable”. There are also other competitive brands out there. Some litho “inks” are what are actually used to “ink” the stone once the image has been gum and acid etched into the metal plate or stone surface.
May I suggest you do a little research on hand done stone lithography to get an idea of the process and you will also discover the other brands of litho inks and that in turn will help you get an idea on pricing.
BTW.. learning how to recognize “real” hand done litho’s and silk screen prints will help you in your selections of what to purchase as fine art prints when out in the field buying. It is a world of difference between real hand done, stone lithography and commercial offset lithography done on photo plates and printing done on high speed presses. both in quality and in prices.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
02/01/2018 at 8:42 am in reply to: Looks like Ebay is partnering up with another Payment Processor #31802T-Satt: Think I saw that in one of their explanations of “Buyer Benefits”. That in giving the Buyer “Options”, the option would be use PayPal or [and I am guessing to the jargon] “Ayden”, which means the payment of their choice, which would be their choice of credit cards, etc. But all is just speculation at this point and we all are on a “wait to see” basis.
Guess for now, we are all on the “business as usual” mode.
02/01/2018 at 7:55 am in reply to: Looks like Ebay is partnering up with another Payment Processor #31794But they said they will do a phase in and I think somewhere it said starting it do some phase ins starting end of 2018. So, as AdventureE states above, we know how well Ebay handles transitions [i.e. Linda Shields issues, our issue of Ebay using our previous Sale Price as the the newly listed price, 5 reps giving 5 different answers to the same question and tons of others].
So Jay since coding is going to be involved I would think we could start to see them “tinkering” with it by the end of this year and then phased in over the next few years. Which in my opinion means issues over the next few years.
Oh well, as we all do, “adapt” as we go.
That is a Chinese character used in many Chinese decorative pieces and on some furniture doors, table and head boards. It has a Korean variation also.
It is “Shou” [pronounced “shoe”]. It means / signifies Longevity. It can be found on many home decor items.
Hope this helps…
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta-
This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Hey Jay.. I would like to maybe revisit the topic of Make an Offer vs. Not and at what elevel.
I know you have mentioned through the last few years that you began to raise the price point at which point you would take offers. I think it used to be only take offers over $19.95, then you raised it to $29.95 then again higher still. The discussion at that time was to try to circumvent getting offers of $10 on a $20 item, because it took up so much time to answer them, accept or counter for only $10.
As we have grown in store size we too have experienced this and feel that fielding “offers” takes a lot of time, especially if we counter, and as you say “drags out the process” also. I find that I need to focus that time in other areas. Even though we do get a lot of accepted counters we make, it still takes time to “close the deal”.
Currently we have our store set to not take offers on anything less than $32.00 but find when we run periodic Sales, 2 or 3 times a month that when we use a 15% or 20% Off Sale Store Wide, that drops the BIN Price down to $25.60 and thus we still get offers around $17.92 [a 30% off offer]. I think that the buyers don’t see or recognize that the item is already at a 20% off Sale and that their 30% OFFER puts the price at 50% off the actual original listing price.
So we are thinking of moving our price point up to $50 or higher with MO and without MO on all items lower than $49.99. Since we run Sales about 20 days out of each month that makes a $50 item discounted to $39.99 with the 20% Sale applied and then if the buyer offers a number at what they think is 30% off the Sale price, then at least at $28 dollars it may be worth the time to deal with a counter.
So, wondering your thoughts on the price point you guys are currently using?
I think you said long ago to list high and put Make Offer on most things. But I don’t know if you know it, but on your #1 larger store, that out of 5,963 items you guys only have 986 with Make Offer on them, which is 16.5% of your store and 84% [5,008] don’t have make an offer on them. And, out of the 986 that have MO on them that 495 are under $50 and 95 of those are under $29.95.
So I am wondering if you have altered your approach on the issue of placing MO on all items over a certain price point? Or, is it because I see you guys are placing a “Store Wide Sale” on your store and due to the reduced price by the Sale Percentage, that you take the MO off of all the items while they are on Sale?
Just wondering while I am seeing a scenario that seems contrary to the original discussions a couple of years ago. Mainly interested because of thinking about taking the MO off about half our store, items under $50.
thanks for any update in your thinking on this topic.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
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